10 Small Changes That Would Have Improved The Star Wars Prequels

The Star Wars prequels are among the most unfairly ridiculed movies in recent memory, despite being victim to unrealistically high expectations from fans of the original series – fans who still haven’t quite forgiven George Lucas.

Sure, they’re not classics like the original films, but none of them are worse than average and there are lots of positive aspects of the movies that are often overlooked. They offer a great look at the final stages of both the Old Republic and the Jedi Order. That being said, there’s still a lot that went wrong with the prequels, including bad screenplays, acting and just plainly bizarre decisions.

With a few small change, however, here’s 10 ways they might’ve improved the most detested movies prequels ever made…

10. Cut/Alter The Unnecessary Origin Stories

Way too many previous characters from the original series make distracting appearances in the prequels. Some characters, such as C-3PO and RD-D2, have origin stories that really don’t make any sense in context of the overall saga. The fact that Boba Fett is only one out of millions of clones (even if he isn’t genetically altered) does kind of reduce the level of awesomeness he had in the originals.

Some characters (Obi-Wan, Anakin, Yoda) obviously had to be in the prequels, but everyone else that wasn’t absolutely necessary should have been left out or at least not introduced until the end of Episode III to transition the new films to the old ones.

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I love movies, literature, history, music and the NBA. I love all things nerdy including but not limited to Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, and Firefly. My artistic idols are Dylan, Dostoevsky, and Malick and my goal in life is to become like Bernard Black from Black Books. When I die, I hope to turn into the space baby from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Nice list! I particularly agree with the George Lucas selection – he has always been more of a producer/conceptual guy, and he’s very good at that aspect of filmmaking.
It never made sense to me why a guy who insisted that he “hates writing” (and let’s be honest, isn’t wonderful at it) would write all 3 prequel films himself.
The Green-Screen issue is interesting and debatable, I think. Lucas was very much interested in pushing the boundaries of digital filmmaking – if I remember correctly, almost the entirety of Sith was shot on nothing but green screen just to prove it could be done. While I applaud the effort to use new technology, I’ve always felt that no matter how flashy and fancy your film might be, that’s no substitute for good storytelling and characters.

This has hit on one of my key issues with the prequel films, that of the character of Anakin Skywalker and the actors that have played him. If you look at A New Hope Ben Kenobi speaks of a great friendship between himself and Anakin, there is even a slight emotional pause as he remembers this great friendship, the audience even seems to get a small sense of his regret, this is called acting, real old school acting . Yet in the prequels there is no real evidence of this friendship between the two. Anakin’s character moves from little brat to moody angry teenager. Ben Kenobi comes over as an angry father, they never evolve beyond this point. The more rounded relationship was in fact the one between Ben and Qui-Gon and on this point alone the films fail.

Good article. If you’re interested in seeing more Darth Maul, I’d recommend the following Clone Wars episodes in this order: Brothers, Revenge, Revival, Eminence, Shades Of Reason, The Lawless. They see the reutrn of Darth mMul and massively expand his character. He’s also voiced by Sam Witwer who voiced Starkiller in The Force Unleashed.

In a perfect world, Richard Donner would have directed ‘Return of the Jedi’ and neither the prequel nor upcoming sequel trilogies would have been made, alas, we’re not in that world…

But if ol’ Georgie-boy insisted on doing the prequels (which he did), he should have plotted all three films out in advance, hired an outside screenwriter(s) to shape a stronger and more dynamic script than he was evidently capable of himself, hired outside editors to shape a tighter and more focused final cut than the bloated and meandering cuts that were, and (if it were up to me) hired the following directors for each respective prequel episode;

I like this article, and it helps that I actually agree with most of it! Clearly Anakin Skywalker should have been older when we first meet him in Episode 1, he probably should have been the age Luke was in Episode 4, which means if he was around 60 years old (or thereabouts) at the time of his death in Episode 6, which Sebastian Shaw looked when he played him, that would mean the first prequel installment would be around 41-42 years before the 1977 film, which would have worked out better for a number of reasons…

This list is right on. Darth Maul should have lived longer, it would have made his execution by the hands of Anakin at the beginning of the Revenge of the Sith so much more meaningful instead of Dooku’s, which didn’t really didn’t have much significance on a character tension/conflict level except that he kicked their butts at the end of Episode II.

Anakin should be different…. Hahahahaha, enough said bro!

I really do think if Lucas had taken the same attitude he had with Empire and Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi like you mentioned in point number 2, these movies would have been better. One guy can’t do everything right, he needs others to challenge him creatively so the film can rise in production value.

Agree with every part of the list except the title. I don’t think these are “small” changes. But the changes listed are all relevant, and could have made significant inroads into improving the films.

The Fundamentals: = tighter screenplay/script from professionals in the field, and less use of green-screen: you just get better performances from your actors.

The unnecessary:
— Too much “trying” to tie into the originals. Yeah, we know they’re related, that’s why we’re watching. But the stated yoda/chewy, C3PO/anakin, etc… all just unneeded. And it does what the author say it does. It unnecessarily makes a huge universe seem smaller.

— Anakin’s youth. Unneeded as a whole movie. do this in flashback/memory story telling. There could be extended scenes if needed. Just didn’t need the whole first movie exploring it.

— “over-use” of light sabers throughout. And poor choices between who fights who and when they duel. Agree with author on that point.

The Best stuff we could have seen:
– Darth Vader hunting down Jedi: Absolutely. Even a few scenes with this pulse would have summoned up the fear of Darth Vadar as we knew him. And, if there were fights, they’d been pretty bad ass. (a friend posited that he had thought Vadar was mostly robot due to injuries resulting from duels with other Jedi, and he became Vadar as we see him more slowly, and overtime)– he said that before the RoTS was out. I thought it was reasonalbe.

– Stretch back the time line of the clone wars. Again, this would have had better harmony with the mood of the OT.

– Obi-Wan and Anakin’s friendship: Ostensibly, should have been a more important relationship than even Padme and Anakin. It was not presented well on screen. (What should have been done in Act 1 or 2 of RoTS) Obi-wan vs Anakin should have been as heartbreaking as it was momentous.

– I’d add, better exposure to current Jedi philosophy, why it fails, and why “bringing balance to the Force” is an important “ancient” prophesy.

Regardless, good thoughts from the author. Hope some of these can be understood and avoided in the next series.

“In the original films and in the Expanded Universe, it always seemed as if the Clone Wars were some kind of ancient conflict, that the Empire had been around forever, and that the Jedi were some kind of long lost order that no one really remembered.”

Not.

Even in 1977, before we knew anything, we knew that Obi-Wan and Luke’s father had been Jedi Knights, and that the Jedi fought in the Clone Wars. Luke is a young man. Obi-Wan is old, but certainly remembers “before the dark times… before the Empire.” We were never told that the Empire had “been around forever.”

There certainly are things wrong with the Prequels, but this is not one of them.

Bottom line: you could keep almost everything else in the prequels if you made one change to the Anakin character.

He needed to be the fun-loving, charismatic, life of the party, obi-wan’s best friend, unquestionably kick-ass jedi. If lucas does that, the prequels are a whole different story. The last section becomes actually heartbreaking. The deep regret and sorrow in pt. 4 with obi wan’s pause in remembering him now resonates even more. The betrayal is more convincing as he feels he’s given everything for the cause and the jedi can’t even help save his wife.

Because of all the heavy handed & clunkily obvious “flashes of anakins dark side”, we miss out on what could have been a powerful and tragic end to the prequel trilogy. We’re left instead with a character who is so dull and unlikeable that we really don’t care he’s turned into vader.

He blew it. Someone in the future needs to have the nerve to remake these.

“…is how all the Republic ships look like ships from the original series.”

Would agree on that if they had followed your earlier point about moving the series apart by 20 extra years. In my mind it was crazy that you had loads of more advanced looking ships and radically different designs in ‘older times’.